Lockdown Week 4: Progress!

Progress: both in gardening and in writing

After two weeks of a surprise holiday, I've managed to tackle a few things.

It's been great to get out in the garden and I'm very thankful both that I have a garden and that the weather's been good. I've harvested, weeded, added bark to pots and planted some more potatoes. Easter's roast lamb was nicely accompanied by roast potatoes and yams from the garden. On Easter Monday, my housemate and I were able to have a barbecue with neighbours. Before you panic, we did manage social distancing! As our fences are low, we were able to stay our in our own gardens and just pass food over the fences. It was sociable and people made a real effort to chat, which was great. Hopefully something we'll do again.

I do think the current situation has made us all more creative. I did think I would miss contact with people while off work, but it actually hasn't been too bad. Church has continued almost on a normal schedule, thanks to Zoom. I've been glad of the Sunday teaching, which is always very relevant to the situation at the moment, as well as 'meeting' with my house group weekly. I've also had a couple of Zoom 'dinner dates' with friends which have been lovely. And my close friends have also been very good about texting and phoning, so it doesn't feel like it's been a long time without contact.

Writing friends tell me it;s a good time to contact agents, as they are getting through queries quicker at the moment. This has given me the push I needed to finish the first draft of my current novel, The Prophet's Grace. It's very rough, but I just wanted to get the actual story down. Now I've got the narrative down, I'll do a line edit and it send to my beta readers. I'll also do a character list as I go through - I really should have done that from the start!

Here's hoping I can keep up the momentum up back at school - I'll let you know!